It'll be like having 1000 Johann Gutenbergs every minute! (image from the University of Houston)

Yes, we're gonna have to go right to ludicrous speed... when printing

The printing press, perhaps the greatest invention by modern man, could be taking another leap. A pair of engineers from the College of Judea and Samaria in Israel published their research in a recent edition of the Applied Physics Letters, which details an ink jet print head capable of printing ~1000 pages per minute.

Researchers Moshe Einat and Nissim Einat have designed a print head called JeTrix that is conceptually similar to that of a LCD monitor. The printer head features micro-reservoirs of ink, and each reservoir is responsible for an element on the page, just like how each pixel is represented on an LCD monitor. Traditional ink-jet heads need to move back and forth across paper, but this new concept enlarges the print head to the cover the entire sheet. This allows a page to be printed in just one process, which explains the remarkable printing speed.

This isn’t some idea cooked up in the heads of a couple mad scientists - Moshe Einat and Nissim Einat have already experimented with a 57600 nozzle matrix print head and achieved good results as proof of their design. The implications of JeTrix mean more than just improved printer technology; it could also lead to new ways of gathering and spreading information.

“The future applications of JeTrix will be traditional, such as extremely high-speed printers for industry, offices, and homes. But we also anticipate brand-new, pioneering applications. One example is in-store book printing – where the book is printed instantly for the customer. This could enable small bookshops or even airport kiosks to carry a huge variety of books. There's also personalization – newspapers or journals printed with a customer's name, favorite topics, and suitable advertisements,” Moshe Einat told PhysOrg.com.

With additional funding and R&D, the researchers behind this technology believe that commercial products based on the JeTrix printing head could be available in two years.

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"Nobody making purchases at a kiosk is looking to buy an obscure book that wouldn't be on a store shelf anyway."

Books don't have to be obscure to be unavailable at your nearest mega-bookstore, just like movies. Most of what's at bookstores are either huge-sellers or limited to mass-market generic appeal. I have a HUGE Amazon wish list, and most of the books can't be found locally. Many are not obscure, but deal with subjects that aren't mass-marketable: technical areas - data mining, ai, machine learning; horse race handicapping; etc.

I remember several years ago a video rental store near my home had a huge sign in their window, something like "We have 60 copies of Volcano!" My question was, "What if I don't WANT to watch Volcano?" Tough. Older movies got bumped off the shelf to make way for those 60 copies of volcano - happens in computer game stores too. Limited inventory space, so only the latest and greatest gets stocked. Books-on-demand eliminates that problem for books. Also, I can tell from my own field, logistics, that the transportation and warehousing savings alone make a future device based on this technology highly appealing and cost-effective.